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Story:Diaspora
Diaspora is an introductory story for a new project which will involve a re-imagining of the old Khoikapek species (hence any previous articles involving this species are now no longer canon). It will follow the fortunes of the crew of the first Khoikapek starships as they reach out to explore the galaxy. It is not yet decided which galaxy the Khoikapek will now inhabit, and Diaspora is intended as a means through which to explore new ideas to incorporate into the Khoikapek canon. Any constructive input would be greatly appreciated. Discussion thread. Prologue Space. An unimaginable expanse of nothingness. You can travel at incredible speeds for years on end and nothing will change. Keep going and you might cross paths with a mundane lump of gas or rock, or a star, but such furniture of the universe is nothing special, scattered ubiquitously throughout the void as it is. Same old, same old. But imagine this; engulfed in he endless folds of space is a pale green speck, an oasis of life and activity. Come closer and it becomes an orb of smooth green and ragged scarlet, glistening under the glow of a faint, pink-white star. This isn't like the usual lumps of rock scattered across space. This is special. This is Tobano. Closer still, descending through wispy white clouds in a mustard sky, vegetation becomes apparent; dark scarlet plants rooted firmly in heavy brown soil and rock tortured by extreme erosion. Strange and unfamiliar creatures travel the landscape. There is a round green lake where all the creatures come to drink. Almost all of them anyway, for there are two who are acting in quite a peculiar manner not befitting of an animal at all. Each has three pairs of legs, though the middle set always seems to be bent up off of the ground; longer, lankier, nimbler, ending in six long, pointed digits arranged radially like an asterisk. It looks like the back end of each rugby ball-shaped torso has a funnel attached, tapering off into the air, while the other end of the body has a long pivoting neck which ends in a jawless head with two wide eyes. Their bodies are wrapped with colourful garments and they each emit complicated series of carefully manipulated clicks which betray intelligence. Dakodekibacoyticciteko, ccapepaduydahohcu! Chapter 1 "The sulphuric acid concentration in this lake is too low." Batoki showed the meter she was holding, which had a long wire trailing out of it into the lake, to Keko. Keko nodded, "That's to be expected. A geophysics team found that a new fissure up in the hills had diverted the underground seepage that feeds this lake. A lot of the sulphuric acid is reacting with the surrounding rocks before it reaches the lake." "Won't it affect the Taboi trees near the lake?" "I don't think so. The acidity of the system should re-stabilise in a couple of years.1 Tobano year = 34 Earth days" Listening through her feet (as Khoikapek have no ears), Batoki felt vibrations through the ground from a short distance away; she already knew what it was... Two large, four-winged creatures were plodding toward them from along the shores of the lake; the bodies of these blue creatures were round, with no discernable head or eyes. Each, however, had a long palpus at the front of the body and what looked like a long tube protruding from the back (quite similar to the funnel-shapes on the back ends of the Khoikapek). "We'd better get moving, Keko; you know how agressive Depatops can be." Keko nodded and walked away as Batoki rolled up the wire trailing from the meter and followed suit. They reached a safe distance out on the plain by the lake (covered in spiky, scarlet-coloured plants), where there was a glider waiting. "I suppose we'll be back here next time, to check if the acidity of the lake has returned to normal, and if there's been any effect on the Taboi trees and such?" "That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Batoki. Help me pull, please." They both held onto handles on the front of the glider and began pulling it onto a relatively flat stretch of ground which had been cleared of large plants. "My expertese has been requested by the EspatiersSpacefaring Khoikapek. Notable for being organised as a kind of single quasi-anarcho-syndicalist organisation (by necessity, given the dangers of space travel)., and I've accepted." Batoki was taken aback; to be an Espatier - a space traveller - was a very elite role. Yes, Khoikapek had colonised most of the solar system by now, but the huge costs of lifting anything out of a gravity well still remained. Every gram counted, and if you were chosen to crew a spacecraft, then there was no doubt that you were worth it. Keko made to climb into the cockpit of the small glider when Batoki stopped her, "I guess this means you won't be teaching me any more." Keko raised her head incredulously, "Of course I will!" She climbed into the cockpit, "You're coming with me!" Chapter 2 The transparent roof of the cramped cockpit slid down over them. In front of Batoki, Keko pulled some switches and a hissing sound was heard as the flimsy glider prepared for take off. Batoki mused, "It seems a bit strange, don't you think? Espatiers asking for biologists? Physicians, maybe, but not biologists." "It's no ordinary mission." "Really?" Suddenly, a jet of blue flame blasted out of the back of the glider, which leapt forward. Within seconds it was in the air. Keko turned the vehicle in a circle over the lake, then pointed it into the big pink sun; there was no glare from this dim star, you could look directly at it. In fact, it was so dim and close that a smattering of sun spots were visible across its surface. The glider jerked and lifted as it passed over the thermals rising from the nearby mountains. "Keko, what have you got us into, exactly?" Confident that the glider was on course, Keko gave one last burn from the rocket on the back and turned to Batoki behind her, "We're going to be Espatiers on the Tapoka." Batoki didn't know what to say. "We'll be leaving very soon, do you accept?" "Of course!" Only recently had the Khoikapek mastered the technology of faster-than-light, or 'superluminal', travel, which so far had been confined to small experimental spacecraft within the solar system. Only a single probe had travelled to another star (several hundred years ago now) to prove it could be done, but nothing beyond that. After all, interstellar travel is expensive and time consuming, but for what? No other planets habitable to Khoikapek had been discovered by telescopes, and there were plenty of resources to exploit without having to go to another star. That's why the Tapoka and the Kekanek were the technological wonders of their age. They were huge constructs in orbit; the biggest and fastest superluminal spacecraft ever to be built, each had provision for hundreds of crewmembers. They were to carry out a number of missions which required large numbers of personnel and state-of-the-art technology, but these starships were primarily a response to the growing evidence that there could extraterrestrial societies elsewhere in the galaxy. Now it all made sense to Batoki. The Espatiers wanted Keko and herself to join the mission to examine alien life! It was opportunities like this that she daren't ever consider, because she knew it would never happen, but it was! "Why me, though?" "I know you well, Batoki. I know I can trust you and work with you. You have an unconventional way of thinking which I think will be invaluable to a mission like this. No qualification or commendation can go in the place of that." "Thank you." "Most of the crew on the Tapoka speak Ktaki, but a few crewmembers aren't proficient at the language. You can speak Dikata, can't you?" "Yes." "I think that could come in useful. If I was assigned to the Kekanek it might have been different; most of them speak Optopo." As they had been speaking, the glider had been approaching a huge, semi-transparent bauble - a geodesic sphere kilometres across, floating in the atmosphere. Keko spoke through the comms system, "Okoket entering gate three." She took back control of the glider and aimed it at a small round hole along the equator of the sphere. They approached the bright interior, and the glider rushed through. Chapter 3 The glider was buffeted about as they entered the warmer air of the interior. Inside this immense sphere was a truss-like network of tubes linking round nodes and pyramids many stories in height. The whole structure made up an octahedron within the sphere. Long ago had the Khoikapek left the surface of their world in a bid to preserve the planet's ecosystems; hundreds of floating metropolises like this one plied the skies of Tobano. The air inside the sphere was always slightly warmer (and therefore slightly less dense) than the air outside; the sheer volume of warm air contained within the sphere was enough to lift the arcology into the sky. Keko maneuvered the glider toward a nearby landing track and Batoki braced as the glider thudded down and skidded to a halt. Keko had never been very good at landings, "You need to brake the tail flaps more to kill the glider's speed, otherwise it all gets taken out on landing." "Batoki, remind me who the teacher is here..." After landing safely, they both climbed out of the cockpit and made their way along a suspended walkway toward one of the giant pyramidal structures of the city. "The launch will be taking place soon and we have a lot to do; briefings, medical checks..." "Training?" "Not particularly. The starships are designed to be as inclusive as possible, so as to include the widest scope of expertese. Having so many crewmembers with such limited training could still be quite risky, but then again the journey we'll be taking is experimental in more ways than one." They passed through a wide doorway into the the central atrium, an open pyrimidal space within the pyramidal structure of the building. It was cooler in here, only 55 degrees Celcius131 degrees Fahrenheit, by virtue of the light cream or white colouration of the city structures, and the space was aesthetically planted with various scarlet-coloured flora from the surface of the planet. "You know where the infirmary is. Just tell them you're Espacier Batoki of the Tapoka and they'll do the necessary tests. I'll need to leave you now." "Where are you going?" "I have a briefing to do with the target of our first mission. It's not necessary for you to go because you're my student." "No, I'd like to come. Where is it?" "The second conference room at the top of the building." They went their separate ways. Batoki's medical examination was relatively short, with only one complication that turned up after the physician moved a long, thick plastic wand over her body, before examining readings on a meter, "Is there a problem?" "Possibly. Let me show you." She was ushered over to a great plastic cylinder in the centre of the room, within which a perfect 3-dimensional representation of her head appeared. The computer cleanly stripped away pycnofibers, then skin, then cartilage, then a wiry net of biocrystal and collagen, then the myoskeleton, until all that was left were the primary organs within the head. The doctor deleted the eyes, which stuck far out horizontally from each side of the head, and were obscuring the view of the other main organs, "I'm sure you know what most of these are?" "Yes. That tube, with the tongue inside, that runs along the head then down toward the chest is the mouth and throat. The two big lumpy things underneath it are the heart. I'm not sure about the rest." "The little blob on the top of the throat is the optic ganglion, which processes information from the eyes and sends it to the brain down in the chest. That and the throat aren't what the issue is with." At the push of a few buttons on her meter, the physician made the optic ganglion, mouth and throat disappear, leaving just the heart and a long, thin, bony tube just above it. "That tubular structure is the issue." "What is it?" "It's called the vestigial oscillating airsac, or VOA. From your records, I'm sure you're aware that many animals use an organ called the 'oscillating airsac' to communicate." "That's right. Tension in the airsac causes a bead of fluid to vibrate, or a bubble in some fluid to vibrate, however you want to look at it. Animals use it to make all sorts of noises, even for echolocation. I didn't know Khoikapek had it!" "It's what we use for involuntary emotional display, such as trills when surprised or purrs when amused. The organ devolved and became vestigial over the past several million years, as Khoikapek began to use clicks of the tongue to communicate instead. Probably because the loud, constant noises larger versions of the organ made attracted predators; clicks were much less overt." "So... what's the problem?" "The oscillating airsac became vestigial due to a chain of precise mutations spread throughout our evolutionary history. Through mutation it's easy for one of these genes to be switched back on, making the VOA slightly larger." "I have one of these mutations?" "Yes. It's very rare, but, within the confines of the head, it means the VOA pushes against the heart, and can cause pressure on the heart in certain circumstances." That sounded bad. There wasn't enough time for somatic gene therapy to fix the problem before launch. "Will this mean I won't be able to go?" "You should be okay, but I'll be informing the medics on the Tapoka and you'll probably have to have regular checks to make sure nothing's undergoing too much pressure." That was a big relief. She didn't think she was going to make it for a moment. It would have been tragic to be pulled out of the mission so early on. After the checkup, Batoki found her way to the second conference room; the room was a huge triangular shaped affair at the top of the pyramidal building (one of four identical rooms). The floor and several balconies were all crowded with Khoikapek laying on their bellies; the sound was extraordinary, as they all clicked and buzzed as they spoke to each other. It sounded somewhere between television static and pebbles being poured out of a giant bucket. There must have been several thousand Khoikapek in there. This was not a meeting of a pack-based species - a species with tall hierarchies where a few superiors sat in a room and talked things over. This was a meeting of a flock-based species - a species with flat hierarchies where everyone acted together and the leader was as important as the bird that flies at the front of the flock, or the horse that gallops at the front of the herd. The great window at the front of the conference room turned opaque, then a blurry image of a blue circle appeared on it, stars in the background. The clicks and buzzes of the crowd quietened to hear what the Speaker had to say, "This is the latest image from our telescope array at the edge of the solar system! The planet is significantly different from our own; the blue colouration is from near-pure water, not dilute sulphuric acid. The atmosphere is rich in oxygen, and the planet orbits a yellow, G-type star." Trills and buzzes of amazement from the crowd. "Of course, it would make an unlikely home for alien life." There were mainly exclamations of agreement from the crowd, though some were unsure, and others thought there was a chance. The Speaker explained to the doubters, "Though water is a good solvent, the lack of sulphuric acid is a serious drawback, as it limits the amount of substances that can be successfully dissolved or reacted into the oceans. "The obvious sign that life probably doesn't exist on this planet is the oxygen in the atmosphere, compared with the carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, carbonyl sulphide and chlorine in Tobano's atmosphere. Oxygen is highly reactive, so much so that things burn in oxygen. Hardly a conductive environment for life!" More clicks of agreement from the crowd. "The planet rotates rapidly, rather than having the same face pointing toward its sun as Tobano does. This would be problematic for any plants. They couldn't just point their leaves in one direction; they'd have to rotate, perhaps, to follow the sun across the sky. Plants would also have to make provision for regular periods of complete darkness! It would be like miniature versions of Tobano's volcanic winters, but several times a year! "Perhaps there will be a mission to this planet in the future, to see just what geological activity is going on there to oxygenate the atmosphere. The planet is quite old, so it's plausible to assume that there is no geological activity, and there are no compounds left that can react with the oxygen and remove it from the atmosphere. A hostile world indeed!" The Speaker then moved on as the low-resolution image faded out of view, "Of course, as you're about to see, just because a world is hostile doesn't mean it can't host life. All you need is the right ingredients." A new image came into view. This one was a yellow world, streaked with hints of orange and brown. In the background was a huge, striped, blue and white orb. There was excited chatter from the crowd. "The more natural colours of this world immediately caught our eyes, unlike the unnatural blue colour of the previous planet you saw. I'm sure a lot of you are wondering about the huge planet behind this world; it's a type of planet surprisingly common in orbit around stars larger than our own sun, Gwa. "Those planets are composed almost entirely of gas, something only hypothesised until our telescopes became powerful enough to look into other solar systems! The world we're looking at is actually a moon of this gas planet." To Batoki, this moon still looked like a very unlikely candidate for life; even in this blurry image she could see that it was very volcanically active; she guessed the small green bulge that could be seen on the side of the moon was some sort of huge eruption. Many of the crowd were saying the same thing (Khoikapek have a stong tendency to speak their minds). "Yes, I realise it looks an unlikely candidate, but there are actually a lot of reactive substances on this world similar to those present on Tobano. A veritable crucible of life! But that's not all! This is the reason that this world could be the greatest discovery ever made by Khoikapek..." The image zoomed out until even the gas planet was just a small white circle in the middle of the blackness of space, then, one by one, tiny blue crosshairs began to appear at apparently random points on the screen. "The solar system we're observing is currently scattered with large numbers of big asteroids, a few of which are identified here. We suspect this is due to a nearby star disrupting the Oort cloud, but that isn't important. What I'm about to show you is the culmination of several hundred years of observations..." Suddenly, the crosshairs flashed out of view, and new ones appeared; a date appeared on the top of the screen, which then flickered into fast-forward as the crosshairs crept across the screen, trailing thin blue lines to represent the paths being taken by their respective asteroids. Everything looked normal, but then... Suddenly, one of the asteriods veered off of its trajectory and rapidly shot off into deep space, past the edge of the screen. Then another. Then another asteroid veered off course and jumped into a tight orbit around the gas giant; it blurred around in a circle for a few Tobano years before the rendering software lost track of it. The crowd chattered excitedly, before the Speaker confirmed what was on everyone's tongues, "This is no natural phenomenon. This is something intelligent trying to protect itself. This is the target of our first mission." Chapter 4 Batoki stood by the side of one of the various glass walkways that linked the various parts of the city, her head resting on the short wall. Numerous flying machines flew in a big anticlockwise circle around the octahedral city, just within the walls of the geodesic bubble in which it was contained. A vehicle occasionally broke off from this thoroughfare to return to the city, or a vehicle would emerge from the city to arc around with the others. It was often much faster to fly around the suspended city than to travel through it. Below her feet, through the glass floor, a dizzying aerial view of the landscape two kilometres below passed slowly by. A landscape buried in maroon vegetation and streaked with long, thin bodies of acid like scars in the landscape. The wispy clouds served to add another dimension of motion as they wafted slowly underneath. But Batoki wasn't looking at the circuit of high-speed traffic or the stunning landscape. She was looking up, to the sky. There the soft pink disc of Gwa, suspended in the same place in the sky as it always was, solar activity streaming across its surface like slow rivers or great arcs of electricity, beckoned her to explore... "Batoki?" "Ah... I'm here!" Keko had taken her off guard. "You seemed very deep in thought." "I was thinking about what life would be like out there, on those other worlds." "Very strange indeed, I expect. We're lucky to live in such a forgiving environment. Imagine living on a planet where the same face didn't always face the sun! The sun would constantly move across the sky and dip below the horizon as the planet rotated! It would be light, dark, light again..." "Almost as if the planet was unstable, tumbling through space?" "Yes! Nowhere near as fine-tuned for life as our world. I wonder how plants would cope in such an environment?" "I've been thinking about that. The Speaker at the meeting hypothesised that plants would have to rotate, but that would take a lot of energy. I think it would be better to have lots of little leaves, instead of a few big leaves like on Tobano, pointing in all different directions. Then they wouldn't have to move." Keko thought about that idea, "Maybe. But only a few of the leaves would be pointing at the sun at any one time. There would be a lot of waste, leaves not paying their keep." Betoki buzzed as she realised the flaw in her hypothesis, "I didn't think of that. That was a stupid idea! And what about the animals? Would they have to adapt for both light and dark?" "I know of a species on Tobano which goes into 'hibernation' - a kind of natural stasis - during periods of volcanic winter. Bodily functions reduce to a minimum and the creature remains unconscious until conditions improve." "You think creatures might 'hibernate' in this way on other planets, so they only ever experience dayside or nightside?Daytime or nightime." "Perhaps." "Switching between conscious and hibernating states so often could put a lot of stress on such a creature's biochemistry, unless the planet rotated really slowly." "You're right. It's a ridiculous idea. Life is obviously much easier on planets where it's either eternally day or eternally night. Let's stick with that." They watched the world go by for a moment together. It was clear that they were both apprehensive about the mission; they both knew the risks, but the chance to be at the forefront of such a momentus historical event was just too good to pass up. "Congratualations on passing the Eugenic TestA test in order to determine whether a Khoikapek is worthy enough to mate; present in one form or another the majority of Khoikapek societies since ancient times., Batoki." "I didn't want you to know about that!" "I'm your mentor! I raised and taught you! I'm allowed to know." Batoki turned away; sensing the air of hostility, Keko changed her tone, "I don't know why you're so closed about it; it won't endanger your place in the mission. The Tapoka has a creche and I know a number of prospective mentors who will take a student when you abandon your child." "Thank you. But it isn't that; it's just that I don't want to sound hypocritical." There was a pause as Keko thought about what her student meant, then, a flash of remembrance, "Oh! That! Batoki, I don't think your qualms about the eugenic tests should stop you from actually taking part." "I didn't need to do it, though." "Yes, it's not like there's any organisation to force everyone to live a certain way, but it's a show of solidarity if you at least oblige yourself to follow the social norms." "How is it 'normal' to have tests to determine who is and isn't allowed to reproduce?! I know nobody will force everybody else to oblige, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't have been labelled 'uncivic' if I refused to take the test!" "Oh, Batoki, I don't want to argue about this now, but it's more normal than you realise. When primitive Khoikapek left their flocks to Actualise themselves, it was nothing but a harsh, natural-selection based form of Eugenic Test." "ActualisationA 'leaving the nest' instinct originating in primative Khoikapek which resulted in Khoikapek leaving their flock at an early age to fend for themselves. was more real, more visceral, though. That was the whole point. We should return to the old ways." "Some might think you quite harsh, Batoki." As Keko had the last word, the atmosphere cooled again and the two Khoikapek returned to watching the world go by; a psychological vestige of an old flocking instinct in which each Khoikapek would spend a small portion of their day watching for threats and looking out for others. "Do the the Espaciers have your ornamentsThe small number of valuables which Khoikapek possess as their personal property.?" "Yes." "Then it's time to leave." Chapter 5 In the Espacier's building at the edge of the city (just another white pyramid like the rest), Batoki and Keko shed the usual colourful fabrics they wrapped around themselves in favour of light grey padded outfits with the occasional tube ports. This involved sticking various adhesive pads to different parts of their bodies, covered in sensors to monitor their biological activity. The only parts left uncovered were their heads, hands (for feeling) and feet (for hearing). After a final briefing, they, along with ten other Espaciers in similar suits, set themselves down in a transport capsule; these were narrow vehicles with lots of windows. Cramped, there was room for just a dozen perchesKhoikapek are four-legged so they don't sit; they perch on something resembing a small sloped, U-shaped matress, in pairs, each one behind the other. Closing, the capsule sped off through one of the city's many transport tubes; this was not one of the numerous tubes between buldings and transport nodes, but one of the few that extended out from the octahedral city to the edge of the bubble in which it is contained, like the spokes of a wheel. It took just a minute or so for the capsule to leave the bubble-city and enter what was attached to the other end of the transport tube; a great chevron in the sky. The blue-purple chevron was well over half a mile across, with smooth, airfoil-like curves across its upper surface. Below it hung comparatively tiny engines and gondolas (though each of these were the size of small warehouses). The sheen of the upper surface of the curious aerostat betrayed a coating of lightweight solar cells. Batkoi and Keko quickly clambered out of the transport capsule as its doors opened in a room that would otherwise be quite spacious, if not for the thousands of small white equipment boxes stacked on metallic-looking shelves and frames, along with the dozen or so grey-clad Espaciers taking inventories or hurrying up a ramp into a room above. "Hurry, Batoki! We're the last ones on." Up the ramp was a long, thin room with about two dozen Espaciers on perches; at the front of the room was a transparent wall of toughened borosilicate glass. "I thought there would be more than this." They strapped themselves down onto some vacant perches. "The personnel area of the aerostat is compartmentalised, in case of decompression." With Keko's comment came a wave of apprehension between the two as they remembered the dangers of space travel they had been informed about in the conferences. Instinctively, Batoki rested her feet on the floor either side of her perch to feel the vibrations through the vehicle. Through them, she heard the faint hissing of priming pumps. "Er... Keko... what do stars look like?" It had only just come home to her that this would be the last time she would see her home city, even her home world, in a long time. If ever. She cursed herself for thinking like that. "Oh, you've seen stars before. When you were very young..." Keko paused as they heard a loud clunk as the aerostat decoupled from the floating city. It was obvious that she, too, was apprehensive. Maybe that was the real reason she had invited Batoki along with her? "...the city drifted over to the night side of Tobano for a few years. You'll be too young to..." "Keko, what did they look' like''?"' The hissing grew louder as air was pumped out of compartments within the envelope of the aerostat, gradually making it more and more buoyant. "They looked like tiny pinprick holes in a pitch black blanket. They were... beautiful. The pictures don't give them credit." The geodesic pattern of the bubble containing the city slowly began to move in front of the windows as the aerostat came about. It moved sluggishly at best; the humming electrostatic thrusters (more suited for working in space than in a thick atmosphere) only able to provide kilograms of thrust to drive the multi-tonne ship. Now they were facing just above the horizon, toward the sky. The humming of the thrusters increased now that they were pointing away from the city. The weight of the aerostat now much lower than the atmosphere it displaced, the vehicle began to accelerate both forward and upward, its aerofoil shape allowing the buoyancy and thrusters to complement each other, coaxing the aerostat into travelling diagonally, higher and faster. One can only be apprehensive for so long, and after an hour of slowly rising, and Batoki's wonderment at the stars that began to enter view as they left the atmosphere, Keko's mood lightened, "You know, it used to take a huge amount of energy to get into space." Now that they had almost cleared the atmosphere, and accelerated to several hundreds of kilometres per hour in the process, the thrusters were finally brought up to full power to accelerate the aerostat, unobstructed by atmospheric drag and unhurried by the prospect of falling to the ground, up to orbital velocity. "Really?" "Thousands of years ago Khoikapek used rockets. The rockets just blasted up into the air, trying to leave the atmosphere as fast as possible then reach orbital velocity as fast as possible, so that they didn't fall back down again. It took a huge amount of energy and most of the weight of them was actually just fuel. "These aerostats are much better. They use a buoyant gas to just float to the top of the atmosphere, then use a cheap, low thrust ion propulsion system to gradually accelerate to orbital velocity. They require no outside energy - the ion propulsion is powered by solar cells on the top of the aerostat - and no outside propellant - they just suck gases out of the atmosphere to use as propellant." "Actually, most aerostats don't use buoyant gases anymore." Keko and Batoki both turned to see the Khoikapek on a perch next to them, who had just interrupted, "The gas envelope is full of rigid, lightweight cells. They just pump the air out of them to create a vacuum, the most buoyant substance of all." Keko seemed quite irritated at being interrupted while she was teaching, "Who are you?" "My name is Pabbata; I'm the student of one of the pilots on the ''Tapoka." "Why aren't you with your mentor?" "She's already on the Tapoka, preparing for the launch. She's been there for a few days now." Pabbata was obviously a student near the end of her Actualisation, if she was trusted to be by herself for several days. It showed that she didn't need a mentor keeping tabs on her to make sure she didn't get into any trouble, and that she was now personally obliged to live by the customs of society. After all, losing your independence is a sure sign of maturity. Pabbata was probably at a similar stage in her life as Batoki herself. Batoki noticed Pabbata was looking slightly uncomfortable at all the questions, and Keko was giving off slightly bad vibesLiterally 'vibrations' - infrasound from the vestigial oscillating airsac used as a low-resolution conveyor of mood.. She decided to talk about something she might be more comfortable with... "The Tapoka has six pilots, like oceangoing ships, doesn't it." "That's right! It's actually an organisation system that dates back to ancient times, before the use of gears in rudders. Boats around the Twilight Ruff would have six steerers, that's three on each side, with a paddle each for steering the vessel. That way they had the collective strength to steer the boat." Pabbata was in her element now, excitedly explaining the history of her profession. "Why do we need six pilots now?" "The tradition kind of stuck. After the rudder, the reason for having six pilots was for consensus - six heads are better than one after all, especially when you're crossing unexplored regions. If one pilot makes a mistake, the other five can usually make up for it. The shared workload also frees the pilots up to run errands; they're integral to the operation of the ship!" Keko interrupted, "Look ahead!" The aerostat was approaching a bright, oblong shape in the distance. As they came closer, it became obvious that it was artificial. Of course, it was the Tapoka, surrounded by an assortment of tiny spacecraft busily loading and performing final checks on the starship. The superstructure of the Tapoka was like a long triangualar prism. Each of the three longest sides had twelve hemispheres in a line, spaced at regular intervals along half the length of the side, "...those are the habitat spheres, embedded within the superstructure. They rotate gyroscopically so that they always point 'down' - whether the ship is accelerating, under gravity, spinning on its long axis, or a combination of the three, everyone in the habitat spheres will be pulled toward the floor." Now it was Keko's turn to make a correction, "You forgot about the sphere at the front. That's the astrogation sphere; it contains state-of-the-art telemetry equipment and a magnetosphere generator to protect the starship from cosmic rays and high-velocity debris." Batoki knew most of this anyway; she knew how most of the space inside the superstructure that wasn't taken up by the habitat spheres was used for storage, fuel and life support equipment. There was just one thing that she didn't recognise from the plans... "What are those rings for?" Spaced regularly along the long, triangular-prism-like structure of the Tapoka was a series of rings, spaced rather close together (though they didn't preclude the view of the starship, as they were quite flat). Each tightly encomassed the whole diameter of the starhip. Pabbata knew exactly what they were, "Those make up the most advanced component of the Tapoka; the superluminal drive! Each ring creates a spherical field within itself, called the superluminal field, which boosts the forward velocity of the starship by a factor of 72, irrespective of the limitation of speed-of-light. Combined, the fields will encompass the whole Tapoka and take us to the stars!" "But... if the fields are within the rings, won't the rings themselves be left behind?" "That's... complicated. Think of it like this... almost as a by-product, the rings produce a second spherical field within their outer diameters - though not including the superluminal fields - therefore encompassing the rings. We call them the caustic fields. "The caustic fields have the same 'boosting effect' as the superluminal fields, but the difference is that things inside them also age 72 times faster. The rings are built to survive thousands of years of continuous use, but we'll still be turning the superluminal drive off regularly to check over the systems and refit some components. That's the reason why faster-than-light is so costly!" Batoki found that she was starting to like Pabbata. Like most Khoikapek, in her early years her teacher, Keko, had been her guiding light, a source of facts and answers as she matured and became more interested in becoming a part of society. But now there was somebody else, at a similar stage of development to herself, who was doing that for her. But there was no time for growing up one life experience at a time any more. This was a mission that was planned to last at least 360 years360 Tobano years = 33.5 Earth years and people might need her. There was no going back now. There wasn't even enough data to put an accurate figure on their chances of returning. They really were going into the unknown... Chapter 6 As the aerostat came within a few hundred kilometres of the Tapoka, a dozen warehouse-sized cargo modules (miniscule in comparison with the huge aerostat itself) jettisoned and began to drift away as their unpowered course slowly diverged from the aerostat. Several space tugs driven by ion propulsion very slowly matched their courses with corresponding cargo modules, before mating with them and maneuvering them to match course with the Tapoka. Batoki, of course, along with Keko, Pabbata and many other Espaciers, was in one of those modules as all of this happened around her. The vast distances involved in orbital space travel, along with the arduous checks and clearances required to perform the maneuvers that were taking place (a precaution to prevent any dangerous collisions in that crowded region of orbital space), assured that the whole process took several hours. She looked out of the window in front of them as the aerostat lazily arced over them like some immense, chevron-shaped marine animal, numerous ion thrusters glowing and flashing electric blue over its body. Gradually, it receded further and further into the distance until it was but a bright blue star, glimmering over the planetary landscape below as it began to drag on the thin wisps of air in the highest reaches of the atmosphere which would gradually pull it down from orbital velocity. Then the view turned away from the aerostat, away from Tobano, as the space tug clamped onto their module began to turn them around. Before them was Tapoka, framed against the distant stars. 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